Francis Bassett

Sir Francis Bassett (1593?–1645), royalist army officer, was the eldest son of James Bassett (1566–1603), esquire, of Tehidy, Cornwall, and his wife, Jane, daughter of Sir Francis Godolphin of Godolphin in the same county. James died in February 1603, when his son was ten. Francis Bassett matriculated, aged sixteen, at Exeter College, Oxford, in December 1610; in July 1613 he was admitted to Lincoln's Inn, where he completed his education. On 31 August 1620 he married Ann, daughter of Sir Jonathan Trelawny of Trelawne, Cornwall. By 1624, when he was named to the Cornish commission for piracy, Bassett had been appointed vice-admiral for north Cornwall. On 18 March 1625 he was named to the commission for impressing mariners in Cornwall in preparation for the expedition to Cadiz, and the following year he was appointed a Cornish forced loan commissioner.

As vice-admiral Bassett was deeply concerned by the escalating problem of Turkish pirates from the Barbary coast seizing Cornish fishing and merchant boats and raiding the coast, taking their captives to slavery. In May 1626 a Turkish man-of-war with forty pirates on board was captured by Cornishmen and taken into St Ives, in Bassett's vice-admiralty. Bassett's hatred of the Turks is clear from the tone of his request for a commission of oyer and terminer to try them: he complained that "‘the waching of these doggs’" (PRO, SP 16/27/54) cost him 10s. a day and, as the ship was of little value, he desired to be free of both as soon as possible. By June Bassett had received the commission, but the additional instructions not to execute the Turks irritated him, as "‘they are a great charge for their diet and guard’" (PRO, SP 16/27/54).

Bassett made a financial contribution towards the king's journey north in the First Bishops' War of 1639, but he was less enthusiastic about preparations for the Second Bishops' War the following year. Writing to Secretary Nicholas, Bassett proposed that the 1600 impressed Cornishmen should be discharged, leaving "those few of us for the preservation of this poor part, the Turks having lately infested us, and most obvious we are to all other enemies". Concerned about the labour shortage in agriculture and anxious to prevent the tin mines flooding, Bassett pressed particularly for the discharge of the 300 men from the far west of the county, offering in return to guarantee full payment of coat and conduct money from that area. This, he claimed, would enable him ‘to serve with power our Royal master, which shall be ever my passionate desire’ (CSP dom., 1640, 456–9).

On 21 July 1642 Lord Mohun wrote to Bassett:

"to give you notice that the Commissioners of Array doe meet at Lostwithiell Wednesday next, Pray doe mee the honor: to meet your friends Sir Nich: Slanning, Sir Bevil Grenville & Mr Arundle of Trerice heer a Tuesday, where we shall conferre about some business concerning setling of this County." (Cornwall RO, B 35/44)

A week later, Bassett also received a personal appeal from the king evoking his duty of loyalty as vice-admiral. He became an active commissioner of array from early August and sheriff of Cornwall in September.

Bassett played a crucial role in Cornish royalist organization. He shared responsibility with Sir Nicholas Slanning for the distribution of imported arms and ammunition to the various Cornish regiments and garrisons, and was in charge of supplying the Cornish army with money. Between October 1642 and June 1643 Bassett paid Sir Ralph Hopton £1598 9s. 8d., including, in January 1643, £204 to equip and pay his men before the battle of Braddock Down. In April 1643 Bassett went to great lengths to raise over £900 to equip additional troops for the regrouped Cornish royalist army which went on to victory at Stratton the following month. More than half the money was borrowed from a French merchant. Bassett's other sources of revenue included the weekly rate, the profits of prizes seized by royalist privateers, and, from 1643, the sequestration of Cornish parliamentarians' estates. Bassett's accounts record payments made to him by the sequestrators, and the value of tin seized from parliamentarians.

Bassett also repaired and equipped St Michael's Mount, which he owned, at great personal expense. This included the construction of new gun platforms and a new gate, provision of fourteen new guns at £10 each, twenty-one new pairs of wheels and gun carriages, as well as powder and match, muskets, and bullets. Between 1642 and 1644 Bassett paid twelve men and a gunner at the Mount and, in 1645, when the garrison increased to fifty soldiers by the king's command, Bassett met the additional cost from his own resources.

In July 1644, while at Launceston trying to raise the posse comitatus for the king, Bassett saw Queen Henrietta Maria pass by, en route for Falmouth and into exile. Bassett wrote to his wife: "Here is the woefullest spectacle my eyes yet ever lookt on, the most worn and weakest pittiful creature in the world, the poore Queene shifting for an houres life longer" (Cornwall RO, B35/6). The following month Bassett joined the army led by the king, which defeated Essex's army at Lostwithiel. After the parliamentarian surrender on 2 September, Bassett wrote to his wife, "The King in hearing of thousands as soon as he saw me this morninge cryd to me “Now Mr Sheriffe, I leve Cornwall to yu safe and sound”" (Cornwall RO, B35/7). Two days later, before crossing the Tamar, the king rewarded Bassett with a knighthood.

Bassett died on 19 September 1645. His widow petitioned the king that through fortifying and equipping the Mount and lending money to the royalist cause her husband had "contracted diverse great debts to satisfie w [hi] ch a good part of his estate hath bin sold since, to the almost ruine of his family" (Cornwall RO, B35/59). She estimated his total expenditure on the Mount alone since 1642 to be £1620. 5s. 8d. Bassett's brother Arthur succeeded him as governor of the Mount, surrendering it to Thomas Fairfax in April 1646. In 1657 Sir Francis's son and heir, John, impoverished by his father's losses during the war and by his own composition fine, was obliged to sell the Mount to Colonel John St Aubyn, whose descendants still live there.

References

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